What about the OPPOSITE of the Orson Scott Card problem?

[xiphias]

So, we talk a lot about the uncomfortable situation when there's a work you like but you dislike the creator. I think a majority of the people I know really like ENDER'S GAME, and really don't so much like OSC.

I was thinking about the opposite situation, though. Piers Anthony is one of the world's truly kind, decent human beings -- a real mensch. He is a paragon of being kind and supportive of his fans -- a kid ran away from home and showed up on his doorstep once, and he spent a day just listening to the kid, understanding him, and letting him know that "it gets better", which was enough for the kid to go back home, tough it out until he was old enough to get away from his toxic-but-not-bad-enough-to-make-the-foster-system-a-good-choice family, and the kid is now a reasonably happy, well-adjusted adult. He wrote hundreds of letters to a paralyzed twelve-year-old girl who was a fan of his, because her mother thought that letters from her favorite author might give her a reason to live. He simply is a truly righteous and good person.

I've often said that one of the best things for a socially-ostracized weird teenager is an adult who lived through the same thing but now has a happy life, who can tell the kid that, yes, they're RIGHT that their life sucks, but that, if they can just hold out, life will STOP sucking and become actually pretty darned awesome. Through his chatty, personal Author's Notes, Anthony has been such a person for thousands of kids. I can't even estimate how much good he's done in the world.

And I really don't like his books. There are so many better YA authors out there.

But, y'know, he DOES represent almost a full shelf on our bookcase, and we're NOT weeding it, even if we never read it. He meant so much to our teenage selves that we can't really get RID of the stuff, can we? He's a friend, even though we've never met him.

(Does anyone know if he does go to cons?)

Comments

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Some of his stuff is truly repulsive, and I stopped reading his books because I couldn't read the ones that aren't without thinking of the ones that are.

But yeah. He does amazing fan service.

[dandelion-diva.livejournal.com]

*nod* Exactly this.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Sure. IN THE BARN is considered to be one of the most nauseating stories ever written -- and I actually consider it more forgivable than some of his other stuff, because it's SO over-the-top horrible that it's obviously on purpose. I could, if I tried, remember a lot of other things that bothered me even more, but I've blocked them out, and have no desire to unblock them.

He has three kinds of works: 1. really disturbingly sexist horrible stuff which may or may not involve violent rape; 2. YA-ish stuff that's pretty much dashed off and has no nutritional value; 3. stuff that's actually kind of good, but may well be tinged with some of #1 or #2 -- and in REALLY disturbing cases, tinged with BOTH #1 and #2.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

There was, uh... Firefly? The one where defeating the monster involved somehow-consensual sex with a five-year-old girl? That one was quite the repulsive piece of work.

His old short stories were in the "dangerous Visions" vein, which I think is where I first read In The Barn. That was pretty much an entire series of anthologies of deliberately shocking fiction, most of it quite good.